Flourish'd, since mute, to some great cause addressed
Stood in himself collected, while each part,
Motion, each act won audience ere the tongue,
Sometimes in height began, as no delay
Of preface brooking through his zeal of right."
Par. Lost, lib. ix. 670.
Wakefield's hypercritical fastidiousness would have completely defeated the intentions of Gray. His "Bard" had a mission to fulfil which could not have been fulfilled by one suspended like king Solomon, in the ancient Jewish traditions, or like Mahomet's coffin, mid-way between heaven and earth. His cry was δος που στω, and the poet heard him. And thus, from his majestic position, was not—
"Every burning word he spoke
Full of rage and full of grief?"
In the full blaze of poetic phrensy, he flashes out at once with the awfully grand and terrible exordium: